WITH ONLY A WAVE of his hand, the Spartan King dismisses an entire court; his soldiers dispersing with the clink of metal on metal. Even the ancient thing, Enyo, bows her head and is led out without argument. He is done here, his tributes taken, his mirth had.

  My sisters and I do not move, uncertain if the command includes us and terrified to displease. Only Sir Deimos remains standing before the dais, his head tilted in our direction, "What shall be done with them?"

  "Whatever must." The King rises from his throne; a horrid, towering, mountain of a man. And when he looks down upon us, my breath catches — stolen in the way any tribute is. "They may dine alongside us if you wish, Sir Deimos."
  There's something strange in his looking, for it is not at all in the usual, greedy way a man looks at a woman, instead, it feels like he's scrutinising every mortal flaw, "Let it be a kindness," He sneers, "For they look as though they have never known a decent meal."

  There is a twisting in my gut as I stare up at him, suddenly all too aware of the hollowness in my cheeks and the empty ache in my belly. He leers back, eyes on fire; tawny as fresh-forged dawn but not nearly as comforting. Instead, he is striking. A man, a monster, a weapon borne of molten sun. Even the sight of him lands like a deadly blow  — like a dagger to the chest, and when he speaks, his voice is agony.

  "Stand." He commands, "Should I want you on your knees I may only ask."

  We rise as one, headstrong and hopelessly tangled, yanked upwards by these nooses we've made. I tell myself it is the numbness making my knees weak, as I stare into his pious face and tell myself that I will not fall. Perhaps I'm more so my father's daughter than I ever let myself believe. Maybe that is what I must become to survive in this foreign land; a liar.

  By no small miracle, my legs stay steadfast, but still, I am a liar, for as I stare up into the face of this foreign King I know in some way I've already fallen.
  Today, I am Icarus, hurtling through the sky like a fallen star, soaring, arms spread to embrace my undoing.

  Even standing he towers in a way no man should, broad as a bear and not half as welcoming — tall in a way that recalls tales of long lost titans and forbidden Gods. He looms, dark and brooding, a vicious storm cloud threatening thunder — terrifying and awful and yet somehow, beautiful.
  A devastating force of nature.

  Heat finds me in a way it never has before, pooling in the deepest nadir of my being. It settles heavy as lead and makes me brave with foolish intent. The words come fast, and if it were not for the familiar cadence of my voice, I would not have known it to be my own.  "Are you really all that they say, Northerner?"

  There's a collective moment, where my sisters look on horrified and even Sir Deimos shifts his disposition, however slight. An icy hale of regret showers down upon me. I wait, preparing for the strike, for the storm, for the punishment for speaking out of turn, the disrespect of addressing him as anything other than the almighty ruler he claims to be.
  But I wait and I wait and nothing comes.

  Maybe I'm mad. If I am then he is more so. Because if anything it looks as if the Spartan King finds some amusement in my outburst; in the irony of the lamb taunting the lion. Thousands have come today to cower and beg and lay their bare-bones at his feet, yet here I am — some small girl, with no strength but that of her mind and of no particular importance to anyone, risking what no man dares to. It is because I have the least of all to lose.

  The look is predatory, a handsome mess of sharp canines and feral divinity. A most devilish attempt at what I suppose is meant to be a smile. Then he leans close, bowing his head so that it's almost level with mine and I feel the heat of his warm breath fanning my neck. A traitorous shiver crawls down my spine. Everything within me screams to run — to get as far away from this beast as I can, to sail the oceans and climb the mountains if only it will put more distance between us. Even that hallowed place, at the end of the earth where even the maps cannot follow, would not be far enough.

  The closeness is reaffirming in the most horrid sense of the word. For I know now, in the small sanctity of our shared breath; that he is everything they say he is and more.
  Even the air itself becomes a weapon for him to wield, bending into the shape of his unholy hand as he holds it, there, just out of reach.
  I don't even realise I have been holding my breath until my lungs begin to scream. A hungry, starving gasp threatens to consume me, but I force it down, deep where it cannot surface. Then he whispers, only a single word, yet still, it is a sound far more terrifying than any shout may ever be.

  "Worse." He says, with eyes full of certainty. He knows his truth, and now, I do too.

  He pulls away, full-fisted as he claws with him the last of my dauntless. Without it I am threadbare; hollow of that burning bravery — little but a husk of shadowy sinew.
Deflation clogs my lungs thick as tar, bursting at the seams with empty dissipation, like waiting an eternity for a breath you can never quite catch. It's an acrid pull, quite unlike any other.
For I find facing the King is like facing the sun, blinding and if too closely sought, suicide. Yet in his absence, the cold creeps in, and I find myself waiting for the moment he looks upon me again, if only to feel something — if only for the masochistic thrill of it. If for only a moment, to feel worthy of being looked upon.

  "Take them." He says, just as empty-sounding as I, "And we shall tell Daedalus the news of his newest conquest."

The ever-faithful Sir Deimos nods, his armour a bronzed scorpion skin beneath the flickering firelight. I wonder if he stings as harshly as he looks to. I guess I will find out in time — after all, he is the one I am to be bound to, though for how long for, I don't dare imagine.

Those are the frightful thoughts that beckon hysteria — or so they say — the type of thoughts that allow it to creep in and burr poison roots deep in the soft soil of the feminine mind. For men dictate that they are far too strong for such simplicity.
  I hear it is far more common in these lands than in our small corner of the world that we called home, though still, it found a place there too.
  More often than not it manifested itself into the body of a swift death, the kind that always seemed to find those empty-eyed women, the ones promised to heavy-handed men.

  The men that are incapable of love and even less worthy of being loved.

  There were a few on our island of Onasis; sad wives bound to warriors husbands who knew little more than blood and bone. Little of beauty, even less of tenderness.
  And perhaps once every few harvests there would come a day when a wife would be found, hanging bloated and purple-faced by her throat from a pomegranate tree, or a waterlogged body spotted dashed upon the rocks beneath the west cliff.

  Is that what I am to become? Another self-destroyed martyr of femininity?

  As my sisters and I follow the Spartan soldier from the King and his mountain of gold and grain, I wonder what it would be like, for the world to be so dark and lonely that the only way out seemed to be the uncertainty of an agonising end. What if death was even darker than life? For the sake of those women, I pray it is not.

  The sentries throw open those doors at our approach, and beyond this stone-carved cavern, the world is cast new and fresh with boundless marble passages. With every step, Sir Deimos' armour clinks a wicked chorus, and I dread to think what monsters he must face to warrant such protection. Though the fact he wears it even now, in the relative safety of King's palace, if the far more worrying thought.

  "Do you always wear your armour, Sir Deimos?" I ask, staring at his back and picturing him trying to sleep in the damned thing.
  I figure that if we are to be bound then we ought to get to know one another somewhat. I refuse to allow him to reduce me to the sum of my parts, he will see me as a woman whole and talking and with a world of wealth to offer, if only he may be brave enough to ask for it.

  His stride does not falter, strong and rhythmic as it is, though it's as if he tenses beneath that mountain of metal. "Do you always speak out of turn?" He snaps, climbing steps as he does.

  I dare pull a grim face, only because I know he cannot see it. "Only when there is a question worthy of asking."

  "Ophelia..." Ascella whispers in a pleading warning that says, be careful.

  Sir Deimos laughs; humourless and mocking, "That is hardly a worthy question."

  Unused to such physicalities, my breaths begin to rupture in short, sharp bursts as we climb more steps, so many that it feels like by the time we reach the top I have surmounted the apex of the mountain the King's palace lies upon.

  "So then why do you not answer it?" I ask through the gasping stitch in my side, and finally, he turns, eyes like ash and with a horrid taunt to his tone, "Because you are not worthy of the answer."

***
QOTD- What's your favourite name from Greek mythology?